AverTV PCI card (BT878) and VirtualDub

[jggimi]

I can't seem to get the VFW wrapper to work, either with Aver's drivers, or with the BTWinCap drivers from sourceforge. The OS is WME, and the wrapper is in the registry.

The Aver drivers work fine with their own software, and the BTwincap drivers work fine with AMCAP, the capture tool they test with.

Neither of them work with VirtualDub. Any suggestions?

[Swan]

This sounds fishy. I have used Btwincap drivers with all VFW software I had (including avi_io and Vdub) and was able to capture in full resolution (720 x 576 PAL) with my old Aver TV Studio.
Never installed any wrapper either (the files were already in my system). This did not work with Aver's original drivers (capture was limited to 352 x 288 in all VFW software before installing Btwincap).
I am on Win2K, don't know if that makes any difference.

/Swan

[jggimi]

If I recall correctly, the btwincap install.exe put wdm drivers on my pc. Don't know how to tell it to install vfw instead. I'll poke around in their "install by hand" material and see what they say.

[Swan]

I am pretty sure Btwincap are WDM drivers, not VFW. ;)
The reason why they allow full resolution capture, but Aver's does not, has something to do with Aver's being programmed to preview and capture at the same resolution, which the BTchip is uncapable of. Something like that. :)

/Swan

"The WDM to VFW (Video for windows) wrapper assumes some stupid things about capture and preview channels (for example, keeps previewing (overlay mode) at full frame size, and capturing at a quarter size instead of setting both channels to the same size). This leads to a preview degradation, not to mention that Bt8xx does not support capture and preview (based on overlay) at the same time at full frame size. So, I had to implement a sort of priority channel capture, that ensures that the capture channel has priority over preview... "

From http://btwincap.sourceforge.net/story.html

[jggimi]

Re-attacking the problem, I reinstalled the btwincap drivers, again. Must have been for the 30th time.

This time, I pressed the ESC key instead of killing the tasks when it tried to reinstall the crossbar and tuner drivers. Seeing as how I couldn't actually use the mouse at that point to press cancel. Odd.

But now, after the 30th re-install, it seems to be working. This card isn't supported, but for composite, and svideo in, it seems to be working. Now.

Thanks anyway, Swan, for trying to help.

[DaveQB]

Originally posted by Swan
.... was able to capture in full resolution (720 x 576 PAL)....

isnt PAL 768x576 :confused:

[Swan]

Pal DVD's are 720 x 576.
All capture cards I have seen only support up to 720 x 576 with the original drivers.
By using 768 x, I'd only get more black bars. This I tested with Btwincap drivers installed. It does not capture more of the video signal in 768 x 576, only adds more black bars.

/Swan

[DaveQB]

oh ok DVD's huh

coz i i know PAL is 768x576, must be TV signal (PAL-B)

[fasttimes]

Originally posted by jggimi
But now, after the 30th re-install, it seems to be working. This card isn't supported, but for composite, and svideo in, it seems to be working. Now.

Install your old drivers, and run the BTSPY program to find out the settings your card uses. Then send the info to the BTWinCap author for addition.

[jggimi]

The issue with drivers appeared to have been WME related. After the install procedure removed the old ones, the driver database would refresh and WME would attempt to reinstall ... while the btinstall was running.

I finally figured out that if I started with no drivers loaded, and rebooted, instead of loading anyones drivers, instead force the use of the "Other Devices/Unsupported Device" for every PnP multimedia device found...I could then install the BTWinCap driver cleanly. And the drivers work with autodetect.

However, after all that trouble, I'm back to the Aver drivers, finding the MPEG-2 capture more amenable than MJPEG to the type of encoding I'm doing as followup.